NOTE.--The very day on which I first contrived the plan, so perfectly simple, and yet so efficacious, of gaining the control of the combs by these frames, I not only foresaw all the consequences which would follow their adoption, but wrote as follows, in my Bee-Journal. "The use of these frames will, I am persuaded, give a new impulse to the easy and profitable management of bees; and will render the making of artificial swarms an easy operation." FOOTNOTES: [17] I have often spent more than ten minutes in opening and shutting a single frame in the Huber hive, and even then, have sometimes crushed some of the bees. [18] The scent of the hives, during the height of the gathering season, will usually inform us from what sources the bees have gathered their supplies. [19] If they cannot obtain it, the Apiarian must himself furnish it. [20] The queens taken from such hives may be advantageously used in forming artificial colonies. CHAPTER XI. THE BEE-MOTH, AND OTHER ENEMIES OF BEES. DISEASES OF BEES. Of all the numerous enemies of the honey-bee, the Bee-Moth (Tinea mellonella,) in climates of hot Summers, is by far, the most to be dreaded. So wide spread and fatal have been its ravages in this country, that thousands have abandoned the cultivation of bees in despair, and in districts which once produced abundant supplies of the purest honey, bee-keeping has gradually dwindled down into a very insignificant pursuit. Contrivances almost without number, have been devised, to defend the bees against this invidious foe, but still it continues its desolating inroads, almost unchecked, laughing as it were to scorn, at all the so-called "moth-proof" hives, and turning many of the ingenious fixtures designed to entrap or exclude it, into actual aids and comforts in its nefarious designs.